Poetry: Alan Catlin

I lost my faith tossed it away like pennies dropped from the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building

I watched them falling toward 5th Avenue and thought of those animated dots moving so far below

and how they might look up and see the hot copper weighted rain as it fell

O’KEEFFE REQUIREMENTS

Landscaping all the stilled lives

of a New Mexico in the mind

requires a death’s head with white roses,

eye sockets hollow as the wind, multi-

colored studies: hot house flowers,

storm struck tree stumps, shallow

caves of bone; transformations,

black abstractions

SURREALIST SUNSET

over North Point Lighthouse

a red phantas- magoria

the eye refuses to believe

the light will fail

#89 FERAL GIRL, BOGOTÁ, 1999after Wm Vollmann

This wild child is so far beyond pain, beyond hunger and neglect, her face is a locked jaw snarl, a warning to all who might think of touching what is hers or in some way interfering with her life

Camus called the wildest creatures in The Plague pariah dogs after how they were unwanted, vicious, beyond dead, untouchable

and you would see them on the streets of Bowles’ Morocco, their ribs showing, mange-infested, so addled by the heat and hunger they can barely move

no shelter for succor for these creatures, for the wild girl, vinyl hood thrust up to deflect the rain

“THE ARDUOUS NOWHERE” Iafter Stephen Hannock

defined by dark vermicular vortex

dense cloudscape that dissipates against

gray-green sky; formerly trapped

within the occluded spherical mass,

a bright concussive light released

“THE ARDUOUS NOWHERE" IIafter Stephen Hannock

False dawn’s finish; a wary stillness

spilt by a singular vein of oracular light

ANNE’S DOLLS

Some dolls are signifiers, others are just dolls. The ones that signify appear to be resting on shelves in display cases or lounging on furniture on the way to another place, another life, eternal as a child of the undead is, denied youth but cursed with an understanding, a desire that can never be realized or fulfilled. The dolls with one eye open and the other shut are observers of tragedies, travesties involving a sickness of the blood, indiscretions so perverse nothing living is allowed to see. The other dolls all have their houses to fall back on, beds on which to lie; their lives are simple, they never age.

Schenectady poet Alan Catlin has been writing for as long as he can remember. His next book of poetry will be Self-Portrait with the Artist Afraid of His Self-Portrait. He is at work on a fictional memoir about his unchosen profession as a barman, to be called Hours of Happiness.